Palindromes
"Dubya won? No way, bud."
That was the most obvious election palindrome, judging from the number
of people who independently submitted it to Slate's recent contest
(three.) A previous primary
contest generated such stunners as "No...McCain, a monomaniac?
C'mon!" In the earlier contest, a single palindromist was responsible
for three of the top 10, prompting Slate's Timothy Noah to refer to
him as "some kind of palindrome hustler."
Which raises the question: what kind of person reads and writes
palindromes? We've got the staff of The Palindromist magazine,
which is less than encouraging. Other than that, it seems that
palindroming is a largely anonymous activity. But why? If you came
up with "Satan, oscillate my metallic sonatas," you'd want the world
to know, right? Well, yes — unless palindromes are secret
messengers sent from parallel planes to invade our minds and rework
the neurons into their pattern of twisted symmetry as they go along.
Because there's something unsettling, even, I'd go as far as to say,
subtly terrifying, about palindromes. Enthusiasts who refer to them
as "'dromes" don't obscure the darn things' fundamental creepiness.
A word or sentence that regurgitates itself back in the guise
of finishing itself is a trickster, a deceiver. When the realization
that something is a palindrome sneaks up on you, you discover that
there's both more and less there than you thought, more in terms
of structure, but less in terms of actual information. It's like
looking around a spacious restaurant dining room only to discover that
it's really all mirrors.
Backwards things have historically been seen as sinister. Reciting
prayers backwards was thought to summon evil spirits. Playing records
backwards was a good way to find demonic messages. Going under the
name "Count Alucard" was how Dracula disguised himself. And
palindromes, throughout history, have drawn on this sense of something
being wrong that you get when something's backwards — only
they're far more subtle and insidious, because they're also forwards.
One of the ancient Romans' favorite palindromes was, "In
girum imus nocte et consumimur igni." Is that not frightening? What
if I told you that it meant "We enter the circle after dark and are
consumed by fire" and referred to moths? Huh?
It all goes back to symmetry. Symmetry, of course, is one of
nature's central themes. Asymmetry where there should be symmetry is
sometimes indicative of disease or decay. But symmetry where there
should be asymmetry is equally strange. Perhaps, given the direction
of entropy, it's much stranger — what's scarier, a butterfly
missing a wing, or one with two heads? Of course, mathematics
recognizes three kinds of symmetry: translational, rotational and
bilateral (or reflection.) But the first two are really just ways of
repeating the same thing over and over again, on a line or around a
point. It's only reflections that actually change the shape while
still being a form of symmetry, and that's what makes them so
disconcerting. It's like...woh, names reverse, man, how?
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhh!!!!!
— Julia Lipman (julia@flakmag.com)
